Their Jobs Always On The Line Unsung ‘Pole Buddies’ Keep Working To Put Powerless At Controls Again
Jim Hopkins eyed the lesser of three evils.
On his left, two black labradors, Pearl and Trooper, snapped. On his right, Kato, a Rottweiler with a spike collar, snarled.
The US West Communications repairman, knee-deep in snow and with 2,000 calls backed up, looked at the downed telephone wire between the pets and sighed.
Dogs, pelting ice and exhaustion met armies of repair workers and linemen working to restore power and telephone service Wednesday.
“Ma’am, can you get your dogs out of there?” his partner Dwayne Adams ventured.
“But that’s where they live,” the labradors’ owner protested. “They don’t come in the house!”
Today, Washington Water Power is expected to double the number of repair crews on the street to 30.
By the time the storm hit Spokane, Ray Sooy, 37, was already working overtime. The Inland Power and Light lineman worked nearly 20 hours restoring power around Pullman late Monday night before pulling into his own cold, dark house on the South Hill late Tuesday. He slept a few hours before heading out at 6 a.m.
Wearing Carhart coveralls, boots and gloves, Sooy and his “pole buddies” waded through slushy snow in the Spokane Valley. With ice chips pelting their hard hats, they pulled themselves over abandoned cars, across yards and up power poles to wrestle lines taut with cold.
Holding insulated tools such as “hot sticks,” they deenergized, tested and grounded lines before restoring power to the 7,200-volt wires overhead. Lunch was a sandwich in the unheated pickup; dinner, pizza on the run.
With overtime, experienced linemen can earn $50,000 to $70,000 a year. But even veterans wonder if it’s worth it.
“It’s blood money,” said Frank LaFaire, a 30-year lineman who now is a safety consultant with the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries.
“They’re out there at night when nobody sees them. It’s cold, it’s wet but they’ve got to stay out there until they get the lights on.”
Being a lineman demands mental toughness, the ability to concentrate and fearlessness. Fewer than 30 percent of the people training to become linemen actually complete the intense four-year apprenticeship.
“It’s like boot camp in the Marine Corps. The ones who make it through are the ones who can take the weather, the danger and the lack of sleep,” LaFaire said.
Washington has the most rigorous safety standards in the country, but the job still ranks as highly dangerous. Two apprentices on the West Side were badly burned recently. Amputations occur annually. The danger is not just electrocution or falls, but terrible burns from arcs of electricity.
Burns mark the ground in the Valley where Sooy and his colleagues fix downed lines. Neighbors watched fireballs light up the sky when lines slapped together. The linemen liken a line to a deadly snake with no rattler. They always assume it’s live.
“I’m afraid of it,” Sooy says. “We know what a power line can do. There are thousands of rules we live by. And sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit lucky.”
Above him in a basket 30 feet off the ground, Roger Holthaus, 57, pulls hard at icy wires. In more than 30 years on the job, he’d never seen rain freeze as soon as it hit trees like it did Tuesday. He was drenched shortly after coming to work, and worked the next 16 hours in damp clothes.
His arms were so stiff the next morning he could barely lift them above his head. Bad backs and arthritis are common. So are long hours.
“It’s my job,” he said, “but you get to work outside, and every day is different.”
Some days, you even shed a little light.
As he spoke, a young mother pulling a boy on a sled approached. When the temperature in her Valley home dipped to 53 degrees, she took her 2-month-old baby to a neighbor’s. She shyly called, “Will the power be back on tonight?”
Holthaus flashes a smile as bright as any fireball.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, it will.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos
MEMO: “After the Storm” special section